youve been lied to for years

you've seen tons of tools all over YouTube claiming that they are the best solution for all of your problems but today I'm here to unveil the sneaky truth behind one of the most popular items in woodworking how you've been brainwashed without even knowing it unveil multiple products I regret buying and how truly the best solution to all of your problems has been directly in front of your eyes this whole time and it's incredibly cheap but first I need to make a confession and talk about something I should have told you a long time ago I think it's finally time to admit that I made a massive mistake I built this workbench outfeed table about a year and a half ago thinking it was going to solve all of my problems my first workbench was made out of some scrap Plywood And I really had no way to clamp anything down so when I made my second workbench I added some tea trck to the top because everybody on YouTube loves tea trck but in reality tea trck sucks the t-ra worked great for a couple weeks and then glue and other stuff got stuck into it rendering that trra effectively useless not to mention when you try to clamp things down to te TR it's only held down by a few screws so it pulls itself up out of the bench again rendering it useless for what it was designed to do so then I built this workbench to try to solve those problems to prevent anything like glue sticking to the workbench and ruining that flat surface I found this laminate coated MDF and while this did work well in the beginning this stuff is such a thin coating that eventually just starts flaking off and now everything sticks to this workbench and as far as work holding goes I did make the edges of this workbench extend over the side so I can easily clamp stuff onto the workbench itself but being stuck only able to clamp things to the side of the workbench isn't really the best solution so that's when I bought one of these automatically adjusted workbench clamps but this still didn't solve my problems why because it's even more expensive than trra at $70 and I can only clamp things down in one specific spot again not a good solution so today let's address all those mistakes that I made and come up with a solution that makes the perfect workbench top now just a few days ago I started experimenting with these dog holes these holes allow you to use tons of accessories like these clamps to instantly hold things down to the workbench anywhere so let's get started the workbench is one of the most ubiquitous items in the wood shop every single person has a completely different setup from the most basic piece of OSB plywood on some cheap saw horses to fully custom work pches made from several thousand of hardwood with more dovetail joints than you can count but here's the problem on one hand these temporary slap together work surfaces do get the job done in the moment they take seconds to construct and allow you to get to work immediately but leave a lot to be desired you can't really clamp things down they aren't flat and stuff like glue and epoxy will stick to them making them even more useless over time but on the other hand spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on a custom workbench with all the bells and whistles in my opinion is the complete waste of time I want my shop to be functional but still be utilized as a tool if I spend months building the perfect workbench I'm more than likely afraid to actually use it for what it's intended to be used for work so my goal is to make a highly functional highly useful and highly coste effective workbench that will stand the test of time and if I end up hating it and it doesn't work out for me I'm not out a ton of money or time throughout this build I want to show you multiple ways to get things done regardless of the tools that you have sure a tracks saw as you saw makes the process of breaking down large sheets super easy but that comes at a steep price I recognize not everyone has one so check this out you can do the exact same thing by clamping down a large straight edge like this piece of wood and running a circular saw along the edge that will give you a perfectly straight cut just like the tracks saw but the obvious downside is the added setup time and as you can see it's incredibly messy but still a perfectly straight cut the first incredibly important thing for a workbench is that it's actually flat sure I could use solid hardwood but that would require me to Mill all those boards perfectly flat and make sure that they never warp over time not to mention the enormous amount of time effort energy and money that goes into that instead I just picked up some cheap sheets of MDF MDF or medium density fiberboard is basically just crushed up wood in sawdust mixed up with a resin or glue that's pressed into sheets this results in a product that is super dense hard and super flat only problem is that one of these 4x8 sheets weighs over 100 lb so moving it is a little bit of a nightmare but that weight will be super handy functioning as a workbench as it makes everything way more stable what you see me doing here is laminating two sheets of MDF together to create an even thicker even heavier and even flatter workbench that will turn out to be about 1 and 1/2 in or about 38 mm thick a vacuum press would be ideal to compress these two sheets together but laying on top tons of toolboxes and lining the edge with clamps will get the job done just fine during this glue up I really wasn't super concerned with getting everything to line up perfectly you're probably thinking that's crazy you want those edges to be perfect well I know my limitations as a woodworker I am far from perfect I am not a machine so I develop hacks to achieve Perfection that just involve a little forethought so instead of cutting all those pieces to the exact size I want for the workbench top I cut them oversiz laminate them together and I can come back with my tracka to cut the slab to its final size leaving me with perfectly aligned edges I achieve a perfect result which is what I'm after only downside is that I waste a little bit of money on materials speaking of wasting money one of the tools that you'll see me use throughout this project that I regret buying is that red woodpeckers track Square it's incredibly expensive incredibly heavy slips out of calibration frequently since then I've picked up this track Square from TSO that works way better at a fraction of the price I'll leave a link to that and all the other tools I'm using in this video down in the description one of the downsides of using MDF is that while the faces are pretty tough hard and durable the edges are a different story hit them with a hammer and they will instantly deform and mushroom Which is less than ideal for a workbench to combat that I'm going to be surrounding the entire workbench with some hard maple believe it or not hard maple is really hard which will help protect the edge of my workbench from bumps but also let me do something else that you won't see coming but more on that later I need to get this rough on Lumber perfectly flat and I don't own a jointer so I use this sled method that I've talked about in virtu all my videos however I recently stopped doing this whole process and upgraded to something different that's one of the many many behind the-scenes videos that I post all the time over on my patreon page not only do patrons help support the channel they get access to all my behind the scenes videos including things like tool reviews unboxing videos in addition to weekly and sometimes daily updates discounts on plans free merchandise and tons more my patrons already know about the upgrade I made so I no longer have to use that insanely timec consuming sled Milling process and they got to view this video in its entirety way before anyone else there's a link down in the description where you can join the community and help me get one step closer to being able to quit my day job and take this channel full-time but as always there is no pressure another tool that YouTubers tell you that you need to spend tons of money on is expensive clamps I need to clamp the hardwood onto the ends of this workbench but I don't have any clamps that large I could absolutely purchase some larger ones for about $70 a piece or I can just daisy chain together the clamps I already own I am all for saving money when things aren't entirely necessary sure owning super super long clamps would be nice and a rare occasion that I need them but there are always workarounds like this to help you out in a pinch just get creative another creative solution toss on some masking tape on the ends of the boards help hold them in place while you get things situated it's like having more sets of hands I intentionally left the edging proud of the surface because again I am not perfect just like laminating the MDF panels earlier I would rather make things too big and then come back to refine them down now hand tools are something that until just recently I pretty much refus to use I never saw the purpose of them until I tested one out at a friend shop I can quickly and easily take off a super small shaving and until things are perfectly flush making the maple look like it was originally part of the MDF and for the ends grab the tracks saww once again and let it do its magic I attached some more strips of maple to the long edges of the bench using the exact same method I just showed the hand plane creates those super satisfying curls but let's not gloss over the fact that the hand plane is also super expensive to purchase and can be an absolute nightmare to set up and sharpen correctly you could absolutely use a flush trim bit on the router to get things situated here or just bring out a sander to flush things up only thing you need to be cautious of is not tilting the sander causing you to accidentally round the edges over but that's not too hard to do all that's left to do now is trim off the excess and this workbench top is done well not so fast so now that the main panel of the workbench is all built and constructed we need to turn our attention to protecting this thing my buddy Ronnie has a great grandmother that always told me the importance of protection so I'm going to listen to her like any sensible person would and for that protection I'm going to use a thick black laminate some people refer to this stuff as for mic which is the same thing that's plagued crappy apartment countertops like the ones I've had for years it's basically just a thick plastic sheet that is super durable and virtually nothing sticks to it wood glue finish even epoxy will all pop off ensuring that my work surface is always clean only problem is that it comes in these massive rolls which are Super flimsy and can be kind of difficult to cut down to size but I got it situated the other problem with using laminate it requires you to use contact adhesive which smells absolutely terrible and probably kills more brain cells than watching stupid videos on Tik Tock so wearing a respirator is essential and so is making sure that you're using the correct filter which are the organic Vapor filters not the dust filters those won't do a thing against this stuff this is my first time ever using contact adhesive and it was incredibly easy but this process is kind of strange you paint it on both surfaces pretty liberally allow it to completely dry which takes about 5 to 10 minutes then you press the pieces together for an instant and permanent Bond and to really make sure the pieces are stuck together well I used this special laminate roller to apply tons of pressure to the surface again I made the pieces of laminate intentionally large so I popped a flush trim bit in my Radder to cut it perfectly to size now be careful here the cheap flush trim bits that have the straight Cutters have a super super high tendency to rip split and tear out laminate that's why I'm using a special spiral type flush trimit here that gives me an absolutely Flawless cut if you want to pick up one for yourself there's a coupon code down in the description and I promise you will never go back to using those straight bits again one of those other things I will never go back to like I mentioned earlier is T trck have you ever noticed that you see tons of videos about people making workbenches with boatloads of trra in them I'm talking like hundreds maybe thousands of dollars worth of trra but you never actually see them use the T trck on that same workbench in a future video well as my Channel's grown I've become more aware of a lot of the marketing efforts that go on behind the scenes trra is simply extruded aluminum which is incredibly cheap to produce but T TR is expensive to buy that is the perfect product for a company to push and no you aren't crazy the reason that you don't see blue teack built into every single workbench here in 2024 is because that company pulled out all of their YouTube marketing dollars I'm a man of the people and you deserve to know the truth they make huge margins on this stuff but I have a dramatically cheaper dramatically stronger and dramatically more useful hold down solution but we're not there quite yet to wrap up the laminate process I need to apply a large sheet to the top of the workbench the other method of cutting the stuff involves using a straight edge and a special scoring knife to score the cut then you fold the laminate back on itself and snap app directly on the line it does work but I still think a saw is a much better much easier solution I'm paying extra attention here to vacuum up any pieces of sawdust or other debris before laying down the top sheet on the workbench because any and all pieces between the laminate and the MDF will show through the top and leave bumps which I definitely want to avoid if you're looking for all the details measurements and step-by-step process to get you through this project or any of the other projects I've built on my channel check out the plans link down in the description below and yes because I know a huge portion of people live outside the us where we still rely on an Antiquated measurement system the plans are also available in metric for you too I should mention that MDF is very porous so it soaks up a lot of this contact adhesive so I recommend laying down several coats just to make sure you get a super strong bond and because the adhesive does set immediately I I laid down some clamps to create a barrier between the MDF and the laminate and slowly worked my way across the entire surface making sure to use that laminate roller to get nice even pressure everywhere now here's a bonus tip be careful when applying pressure around the edges with that roller as you can easily crack the overhanging laminate which would be a huge bummer this far in the project real quick I need your help if there's anyone out there watching that happens to work at Facebook or meta or knows somebody that works there and is willing to help me out with an account issue that I've been trying to reach someone for over two years to help solve I would greatly appreciate it if you could email me at Eric spencley design code.com thanks that would be a Monumental step in getting me one step closer to being able to quit my day job and take this channel full-time again I use that special spiral flesh trim bit to cut the laminate pieces perfectly to size but a close eye will notice all that nasty junk underneath that's excess adhesive but I can quickly take care of it with a little bit of mineral spirits and some elbow grease just make sure that you wait about 24 hours for the adhesive to ful The Cure on the surfaces before removing this excess now it's perfectly clean now one of the big issues about putting laminate on a Surface like this is that these edges are razor sharp no problem though I can throw a super super small round over bit into my router and ease over all all the edges so nothing is sharp bonus tip run the router in the opposite direction doing a climb cut and you'll actually get an even smoother finish on laminate edges this new workbench is a huge change in my workshop and another huge change is that I just got married a few days ago and I couldn't be happier when going through big life changes things like making healthy eating choices can take a back seat but that's where Factor comes in you can crush your Wellness goals this may with dietitian approved meals and ingredients that you can trust plus you can keep kitchen time to a minimum Factor meals are ready in 2 minutes which means no shopping prepping cooking or cleaning up now I absolutely could take more laminate put it on the bottom but I don't have enough left to help save me another trip to the store I came up with a quick solution of applying some polyurethane to the bottom of the workbench to prevent moisture absorption and my solution for not making another trip to the grocery store for food is getting my fresh never frozen meals sent directly to my door with Factor I've actually been a factor customer long before they reached out wanting to sponsor a video and I love how flexible it is I can easily adjust my order size enjoy meals with loved ones or even skip a week when I have a special event like my honeymoon coming next week head to factor75.com or click the link below and use the code SDC C50 to get 50% off your first Factor box and 20% off your next month of orders that's code sd50 at factor75.com to get 50% off your first box plus 20% off your next month of orders so now that I've got my wood wrapped up and protected I can focus on putting in those clamping spots now if you remember from before I tested out these dog holes and ended up really liking them so that's what I want to put all over the surface of this work benchtop and well yes you can absolutely just grab your drill and measure Mark out drill all these holes out but I have a much faster and a way more accurate way to do it this is a jig that I bought with my own money from woodpeckers and I know I know I know what you're saying oh great I'm not going to buy a woodpecker tool they're too expensive most YouTubers would justify the cost but I'm going to tell you the truth don't buy this I was so mad that I wasted my money on this this but we'll get to that in a little bit what I'm doing here is putting in a bushing set on my router and tossing in a massive halfin spiral bit the bushing will sit inside the holes on the template allowing me to plunge all the way through the workbench top and leave perfect dogle cutouts in theory this is a boatload of material to remove all at once so I'm taking multiple passes slowly plunging down to the full depth also I cannot recommend enough getting an attachment for your router that allows you to extract all the dust from the cut I'll show you in a bit what happens without it but it is truly a game changer and well worth the money for any router that you own so after all the holes are bored I can insert these registration pegs to make sure the template doesn't move and get access to the rest of the holes that whole corner is now taken care of so I can work my way down the edge of the workbench tasks like this are very tedious time consuming boring and repetitive inherently these are the exact kinds of tasks that can lead to carelessness which often leads to injuries so be really careful doing stuff like this I highly recommend picking up a pair of Bluetooth hearing protection which prevents you from having to hear this for hours on hand and instead you can enjoy music audio books or my podcast off the cut that do every single week talking about everything woodworking making tools and all the behind the-scenes stuff that I'm up to there's a link for that in the description below also if you are interested in a pair of Bluetooth hearing protection like the ones I'm wearing there's a coupon code for those down below as well and if you are going to do this here's why you want to get a router that has dust collection built in the first thing that you'll notice is there's a massive pile of dust that's created that's messy but it also jams up the router bit and prevents the guide bushing from seating all the way against the template properly which means that the hole being bored out doesn't actually go all the way to the edges the second thing you might notice is that there's a little bit of smoke coming up from around the bit all of the extra sawdust is causing excess friction which is building up heat not only does this give you a poor cut and burn the wood it dramatically shortens the life of router bits which can be very expensive so truly it is worth the extra money to buy some sort of router dust extraction attachment once you have it you will never regret it unlike this jig let's talk about that so now that I've got all the dog holes cut on the side of the bench I need to start working in more towards the middle and this is one of the really common complaints about this system it seems like you should just be able to put these in here and start going but when you put these little pins in a straight line This has the ability to slide back and forth now this small amount of movement might not seem like a big deal but if you're somebody who's going to use these dog holes for alignment that's not going to work so instead of lining the pins up in a straight line what you actually want to do is set everything up so that it's in more of a triangular attachment that will ensure that this thing does not move at all when you go to do the other holes at a w in $220 for this jig from a company that claims accuracy is the Cornerstone of what they do this Jig Is wildly disappointing yes In that clip you saw me triangulate the pins to hold the jig down and it worked great right there but to be 100% transparent as I kept going the small amount of slop in this jig repeatedly compounded itself leading the holes to get sloppier and sloppier as I went if you look closely you can even see a hammer on the bench that I used to pound the pins in and pliers that I had to use to pull those pins out which led to the pins getting absolutely destroyed by the time I was done I wasn't going to mention this but I want to be totally honest about all of my experiences with the tools I'm using for $220 of my own money this jig was a major disappointment and I cannot recommend that anybody spend money on this since then I scoured the internet and found a significantly better solution so I picked one up tested it out while it is $20 more than the junk woodpecker sells I can attest to it being orders of magnitude easier to use more accurate and it only requires you to own a drill not an expensive router with dust collection seems like a win in my book so I'll leave a link to that perf system down in the description below thank God that is over well not so fast because I'm someone that likes to have my outfeed table at the same level as my table saw I need to cut in some recesses that allow me to use my miter gauge without any interference so while I do have the router out I'm just going to cut a couple grooves in here one thing to be cautious of at this point is that this workbench top is extremely heavy I would easily estimate it to be around 150 lb which is like 70 kg for people who use a sensible system of measurement and was a huge challenge for my feeble body to move around but getting it out of the way and temporarily stored on some saw horses allows me to unscrew my old workbench top from the frame speaking of the frame this is not sponsored in any way but I absolutely love this Frame It is a solid metal frame from Craig that bolts together has adjustable height legs and has casters that allow me to move it around when needed and lock it in when it's where I want it to be plus the metal is way more durable than wood and saves a ton of time from having to build my own base with the new top in place I can Mark out oversized rectangles from my miter Slots of my table saw to extend into now it is tempting to want to make these absolutely perfect in the same size as what's on your table saw but I don't want to run the risk of having any interference or the bench not being exactly parallel to the slots so I slightly enlarg them because I know you're going to ask there's a link for this magic pencil with white lead that can write on any surface down in the description too with a few pieces of scrap wood and some double-sided tape I whipped up this jig to rout out the recess I should let you know that if you ever need any router bits I've got a coupon code below that will get you 10% off all my favorite bits and a bunch of other coupons too anyway this worked flawlessly on the first one but after routing the second recess as you can see I destroyed my jig when trying to remove it no worries so I'm all done here so no harm done now you will notice that I have barewood exposed but I've got a plan for that I picked up some of this new UV cure resin which is pretty slick I mix in a little bit of black pigment then coated the recess the thin layer now here comes the cool part I can use this UV light to instantly cure the epoxy which gives me Rock Solid hard epoxy finish in just a few seconds now this will not work for something that like 5 in Deep by any means but for small repairs or things like this this sure beats having to wait a full day for typical epoxy to cure Innovative products like this is something that I really enjoy learning about and finding out I never want to be the person that is stuck in their ways and refuses to try something new even if I find a product tool or technique that I love and it works great for me I owe it to all of you viewers and myself to try something new occasionally that's why you will see me experiment with new techniques experiment with new types and brands of tools and experiment with finishes epoxies paints and glues it's all about being curious and about learning one thing I did learn though I never want to use this router jig again I'm finally done with the router now that I've got these holes finally round it out the first thing I want to show you is how easy it is to clamp anywhere oh they don't fit because of the thickness of the workbench top when I put this in here it gets stuck and can't go all the way through I think I've got a solution though it was at this point that I realized all of those dog hole tables like the mft are made out of just 3/4 in or 19 mm thick MDF and that doubling up the thickness wouldn't cause any issues with tradition dog hole accessories that have a Straight Shaft but would cause interference for these specific types of clamps truly a massive oversight on my end but there is always a pivot that can be made to figure these things out after being so excited that I finished all of my router work unfortunately I had to head back to my router bit collection and pick out this massive 60 degree champer or champer champer champer huh now I'm questioning myself which one is right um 60° bevel bit and created a bevel at the bottom of each and every single dog hole now a bit this large takes off a ton of material so I had to make the full Plunge in multiple passes which was a huge headache not only because it was timec consuming but I removed a large part of the polyurethane I already applied to the bottom of the workbench so after after routing out all of those shampers I think let's not get into that again I applied some more polyurethane off camera what happened this being a quick build and now for real this time I can actually get my clamps anywhere on the bench and easily clamp stuff down wherever I want but Eric you don't have a vice how are you going to be able to clamp stuff to the side of your workbench and work on the sides don't you worry I've got a plan for that too now this is one of those things that I never ever thought I would care about I mean clamping things to the side of my workbench but as I've learned more about woodworking techniques it has me curious about the possibilities that having vertical work holding can give me so this was something that I had thought out before starting this project it requires no expensive accessories and is significantly better than trra but hang on just a second first I popped in an incredibly dull hear that that an incredibly Tull straight bit to create a data along the edges of the workbench nothing exciting but then I swapped out to this dovetail bit I know what you're thinking Eric you started out the video saying that building a workbench with dovetails is a waste of time yes but hold on just a second with that dovetail bit in the router I routed out the exact same path as before the reason for making a pass with a straight bit first is because it helps lessen the load on the dove tail bit which is not only safer but reduces heat on the bit and makes it last much longer all of my friends and fiance well I guess now wife always likes to remind me that I'm cheap so not having to constantly buy router bits is a nice bonus too just be aware that you will have to come up with some sort of sketchy arrangement to Route out some of the edges but dang my middle name now I am serious I am done with the router for this project for good seriously now with these dovet tail-shaped clamps I can slide them on the track I just routed into that hard maple for Rock Solid vertical work holding so I can do stuff like hand plain edges of wood pretty neat now yes I can clamp on the top and I can clamp on the sides but I know that there's somebody going to be feverously attacking the comment section telling me that I missed one big issue because there are so many holes all over the surface of this workbench if I have small pieces say like screws they're instantly going to fall through these holes but before I get to that one there's another issue that I need to address first now even with using that super expensive router jig unfortunately some of these holes still aren't exactly the right size so dog hole accessories like a hold down clamp like this don't necessarily fit in all the holes no need to fear there is a simple solution for this and it's one that I covered in my 10 tools I regret not buying Sooner video it's a dog hole reamer Chuck it up into any drill and its Precision ground to be exactly 20 mm and diameter clearing out any bits of sawdust glue epoxy or just flattening bumps and bruises inside of the dog holes and I know I know I know this build has a lot of repetition in it but that's why you need some headphones to listen to music books or podcasts while you build I find it relaxing to zone out and do stuff like this after after a long hard day at work now all of my dog hole accessories fit perfectly but there's more that I didn't show you but a Keen Eye may have noticed what's going on here so not only does this make sure that all of my accessories fit inside the holes because they're now the exact right size but it also adds that small chanf fer on every single hole and what that does is allows me to do this remember dropping screws in those holes yeah not anymore these are dog h hole plugs that fit perfectly inside the dog holes and leave a flush surface across the top you can easily pop them out from the bottom or because they're magnetic use any sort of magnet that can quickly and easily lift them up out of the holes from hold Downs stops clamps all kinds of stuff there are truly endless accessories that you can both buy and make for dog hole workbenches and the best part all you have to do is drill a couple holes into your work surface and you truly have the best and most versatile workbench top on the market now I could spend forever going into all of my favorite accessories but I'll save that for another video see you on the next one

Channel: Spencley Design Co.

Views: 453,375

Keywords: eric spencley, spencley design, spencley design co, spencely, woodworking

Id: qAufxvaqL2s

Length: 33min 40sec (2020 seconds)

Published: Sat May 04 2024